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FIVE The Aesthetics of the Nation Takayama Chogyū The year 1899 was momentous for the field of Japanese aesthetics. In June, Mori Ōgai published his translation of Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of Art (Shinbiron). Six months later, Takayama Chogyū (or Rinjirō, 1871–1902) published his Modern Aesthetics (Kinsei Bigaku), soon to become a best-seller in Japan. Based on the work of von Hartmann, the Critical History of Aesthetics (Kritische Geschichte der Ästhetik) of Max Schasler (1819–1879), and the History of Aesthetics as Philosophical Science (Geschichte der Ästhetik als Philosophischer Wissenschaft) of Robert Zimmermann (1824– 1898), Chogyū’s work convinced Japanese readers of the need to set up a field of aesthetics independent from the commonly known field of art criticism . With Fenollosa, for example, knowledge of the philosophy of art was deemed necessary for the actual practice of art criticism. Ernest Fenollosa and Okakura Kakuzō were instrumental in giving the field of art autonomy with respect to the pragmatic views of art prior to the Meiji period. They did not, however, keep the field of aesthetics separate from the pragmatics of aesthetic judgment applied to concrete forms of art. A more academic approach to aesthetics—in which the subject was studied for the sake of aesthetics itself rather than as a means toward something else— started only with the institutionalization of aesthetics in the academic world with the appointments of Ōtsuka Yasuji at Tokyo Imperial University in 1900 and Fukada Yasukazu at Kyoto Imperial University in 1910. Chogyū’s work freed the aesthetic field from the anxiety of having to come up with standards of value immediately applicable to specific works of art. Chogyū’s interest in aesthetics can already be seen from the topic of his research as a graduate student at Tokyo Imperial University: “aesthetics in general and the position of Japan, with regard to the literature on the arts, as compared to the world.” In April 1898, he replaced Ōnishi Ha93 jime as a lecturer in aesthetics at Waseda University after Ōnishi’s departure for Europe. Chogyū was chosen by the Ministry of Education to travel to Europe in order to further his knowledge of the discipline, but he was forced to decline on account of poor health. Instead he lectured, in 1901, at Tokyo Imperial University on “the value of Japanese art.” In the same year he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the art of the Nara period.1 The literary historian Hijikata Teiichi has divided the writings of Takayama Chogyū into three periods: during the years 1891–1896, Chogyū devoted his energies mainly to subjects of an ethical nature, inquiring as to how to fulfill the good while searching for people’s happiness; between 1897 and 1900, he concentrated on articles on nationalism and the need for the formation of a national spirit for the ultimate benefit of the state; after 1901 he wrote about his religious awakening, a trend that continued until his death. The last period corresponds mainly to the time of his production of articles on aesthetics under the strong influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy.2 This interest in aesthetics led Chogyū to write a series of articles on the philosophy of art in which he pointed out that aesthetics was less a science to be mastered than an art to be lived. This is the topic of one of his major essays, “A Debate on the Aesthetic Life” (Biteki Seikatsu wo Ronzu), which he published in the journal Taiyō in June 1901. In it Chogyū argued that the purpose of life is happiness—a fulfillment of the instincts to be reached by living aesthetically and independently from the value of moral judgment . As he put it at the beginning of the essay: “If someone should approach me and ask what I mean by ‘aesthetic life,’ I would answer that it is service to life and body, which are far superior to food and clothing.”3 Such a fulfillment of instinctual desires, however, requires the overcoming of all moral standards, whether past or present, as Chogyū pointed out in his total relativization of traditional moral values. See, for example, the following lengthy quotation: Morality foresees the highest good. The “highest good” is my ideal notion of what is the highest purpose of human behavior. The action that is of 94 The Subject of Aesthetics 1. Watanabe Kazuyasu, Meiji Shisō Shi: Jukyōteki Dentō to Kindai Ninshiki Ron (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1978), pp. 210–211...

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